Qualla: Carrigrohane Straight

Carrigrohane Straight: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 21 June 1978 a thirty-something rally driver named Rosemary Smith drove a seven-litre Jaguar XJ6 down a flat stretch of road on the western edge of Cork at 156.101 miles per hour and set an Irish land speed record. The road she used was not a track. It was the N22, a national primary route between Cork and Tralee that happens to run, for 2.75 unbroken miles, as straight and level as a ruler. The Carrigrohane Straight has been used for speed trials since the 1920s. It has hosted a Cork Grand Prix that drew 70,000 spectators. It has been flooded to a depth of 28 feet. It is, in its quiet way, one of the more peculiar pieces of infrastructure in Ireland - a road that became famous for the speeds people reached on it.

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Carrigrohane Straight: Built by Famine

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Straight was constructed in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Earlier maps - Taylor and Skinner's Maps of the Roads of Ireland from 1776, the Cork Parliamentary Borough map of 1832 - show no track at all in this area. By the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1841-42, ...

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Carrigrohane Straight: The Tram and the Steamroller

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the 1880s the Muskerry Tram came through. Twenty-one stations along the line, with one at the western end of the Straight at Carrigrohane and another at Leemount Cross, connected Cork city to Blarney, Coachford, and Donoughmore. The locals called it the Hook and Eye, and the j...

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Carrigrohane Straight: An Early Concrete Experiment

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Straight was originally surfaced in limestone. In 1927 the County Council and Cork Corporation, who shared jurisdiction over different sections, laid reinforced concrete instead. The project was unusual enough that the Carrigrohane Straight became one of the first concrete ro...

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Carrigrohane Straight: The 1938 Grand Prix

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the 1920s and 1930s the combination of the Straight and the parallel Model Farm Road had become a perfect closed circuit, two long straights connected at each end - flat, fast, and ready-made. Cork organised motor races on it. Drivers came from across Europe, motorbikes includ...

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Carrigrohane Straight: Water Returns

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Straight is dead flat, which is why it is fast - and which is also why it floods. The Shournagh joins the Lee at Crubeen Bridge on the Lee Road. The smaller Carrig joins at the junction under Carrigrohane Castle, forded by what was once known as Cromwell's Bridge. With two tr...

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